doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Coloring of parts (Nitre Bluing)

Shawn here is the little Marlin 1892 which lettered with Cody as originally factory case colored (.75 extra in 1906).......complete rebuild and I shoot it quite a bit as you can see......32 CF..... I had to make the 'Rocky Mountain' front sight from scratch.







Cheers,

Nice work guys.

I found a temperature gage on eBay. Buy it Now or Make Offer, made offer and accepted $30 with free shipping. It is a Weston gage, 200-1000 degrees with a 3" face and 9" stem.
Had a choice of gage face either horizontal or vertical and picked vertical to stem. Figured it might be easier to look at and less likely to bump it.

Hopefully by Saturday or Monday will have it and will post some pictures of results.

Doug,

Your guns look very nice. I need to practice taking better photos. I agree that my Marlin colors are a little off. It was the first Marlin that I colored and I was still experimenting with shielding. I used a 2:1 wood to bone charcoal ratio for the Marlin. I colored the SAA several months ago and had learned more about shielding by that time. I used a 2:1 ration for that gun too and quenced at a higher temperature than I ususally do. It has too much green for Colt colors in my opinion. The Bisley I did three weeks ago. I used my usual quench temperature and a 2:1 charcoal ration. I got fewer greens and much more Colt like colors. I am still experimenting with the process.

Fantastic David........that is a very good gauge..........U.S.A.

You'll be cookin' now...............Be extra careful with the hot salts as everyone above has mentioned.....

Keep us posted, looking forward to the pictures....!.......

Cheers,

Thank you Shawn..........we all experiment changing the ration, CCH is like a snowflake, no two are alike........all the castings and alloys are different as you know, even with the same manufacturer.

Your work really looks nice Shawn. Labor of love.

Best Regards,

One queston I have regarding this Nitre Bluing process, will it affect any parts that are case hardened? I want to Nitre Blue the top lever, and it is case hardened.

I know the shaft is. I took a hammerless top lever and shaped it for a hammer gun. The top part was workable and to me I was able to file it with no problem and I don't remember if in the begining I had trouble breaking through the skin.

David:-- ..If you didn't remove the skin all over the lever top surface, it probably won't blue right for color ...........you could gently bead blast it on low pressure, then take it down with 400 w/d for a decent surface, then hot blue it, should be o.k.

You've seen case colored guns that have been blued....some look real lousy and some blue o.k., but still look nasty to me, JMO.

Did you file all over the top surface while reshaping it and remove all the case skin...?....

Hope this helps.....

Best,

Doug, the thing I was worried about is the temperature of the bath annealing the case hardening.

The top lever that I made from a hammerless one, I used cold blued it a few times and it matched the rest of the metal ok.

I just polished this one and it came out shiny. The bluing on it wasn't too bad for a gun built in 1901.
I buy these "klunkers" as Russ Ruppel used to call them, and it gives me a chance to work on them and fix them up.
In the last year or so I really got into hammer guns, and like the pre-1897 ones with the back action locks. But if the price is right, I will get the later ones like this one.

David.....annealing takes place at 1450 F with an 8/10/12 hour slow temperature descent (cool down period in the furnace), so blueing at 6-7-even 800 F is o.k. and the hardening (temper) of the shaft/lever will not be lost.

Cheers,

David,

I have successfully nitre blue hardened parts one of two ways. The first is to nitre blue the part with a first pass. Usually the first blue will have a light blue grey color with patches of blue-black. Next, polish off the blue with 400-600 and reblue. Often times the second blue takes. I believe that this works because the heat from the first blue tempers the steel. Sometimes this doesn't work very well on all steels. The second method I have used is to put the parts in the salt bath several times without polishing between blues. Each time more blue builds up. This is the only way I have been able to blue 2nd generation SAA cylinders. I have to experiment with temperatures but hardened steels will usually turn blue-black somewhere between 750-850F. Good luck.

I have a gunsmith acquaintance who claims to have spoken with a former employee of Turnbull. According to him Turnbull uses 825F. He said the employee claimed that Turnbull used what he described as a "yellowish liquid salt bath" to charcoal" blue and not charcoal. The former employee would not tell him what the salts were. The "yellowish liquid salt bath" sure sounds like nitre salts to me. I have no way of knowing if this is true or not. It was just what I was told second hand.